DOCSLIB.ORG

The Profession of Medicine Is Secular: an Eighteenth-Century Idea with Implications for the Boundary Between Medicine and Religion

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Profession of Medicine Is Secular: an Eighteenth-Century Idea with Implications for the Boundary Between Medicine and Religion Psychiatria Danubina 2021; Vol. 33, Suppl 3, pp S292-S298 Science, Art & Religion 2021, Vol. 1, No 1-2, pp 57-63 Review article THE PROFESSION OF MEDICINE IS SECULAR: AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IDEA WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN MEDICINE AND RELIGION Laurence B. McCullough1,2 & Frank A. Chervenak1,2 1 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Hempstead, New York, USA 2 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, New York USA SUMMARY he aim of this paper is to draw on John Gregory’s (1724-1773) professional ethics in medicine to pro- vide guidance to physicians for the responsible management of the potentially contested boundary Tbetween medicine and religion. The paper provides a philosophical and clinical interpretation of Gregory’s method of argument by persuasion: setting out complementary considerations that together invite agreement. The cumulative effect of this argument by persuasion is that a contested boundary between med- icine and religion is not required by the commitment to the evidence-based, scientific practice of medicine. Gregory’s legacy to us is the concept of the profession of medicine as secular, in two senses. As scientific, med- icine draws on evidence and not on divinity, transcendent reality, or sacred texts and practices. There is no necessary hostility of evidence-based medicine toward religion and faith communities. Key words: medicine - professional ethics- Gregory’s method – interpretations – EBM (Evidence Based Medicine) INTRODUCTION: UBI TRES eighteenth-century response to this challenge and MEDICI, IBI DUO ATHEII. invite the reader to assess its utility for today. With the emergence of scientific medicine in Renais- JOHN GREGORY RESPONSE TO sance Europe and, especially, during the Enlighten- ment, the boundary between medicine and religion UBI TRES MEDICE, IBI DUO ATHEII. became contested. In part, this was owed to com- On the most important – but still neglected – re- peting explanations of the phenomena of health and sponses to this accusation was mounted by the Scot- disease. As the success of medical explanations and tish physician-ethicist, John Gregory (1724-1773). As clinical management based on them increased, the a young man, Gregory would have been well aware authority of religion to explain health and disease of religious persecution of atheists. In 1767 became was directly challenged. The threat of medicine to Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, religion was expressed by people of the Christian a position he held in alternating years with William faiths in the phrase, Ubi tres medici, duo atheii, or, Cullen (1710-1790). Cullen was revered as the best wherever there are three doctors there are two athe- teacher of clinical medicine at the University of Ed- ists (McCullough 1998). In this paper we present an inburgh, based on the Baconian science of rigorous Science, Art & Religion 2021, Vol. 1, No 1-2, pp 57-63 57 SAR.indb 57 18/05/2021 10:41 Laurence B. McCullough, Frank A. Chervenak: THE PROFESSION OF MEDICINE IS SECULAR: AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IDEA WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN MEDICINE AND RELIGION. Psychiatria Danubina 2021; Vol. 33, Suppl 3, pp S292-S298 observation of signs and symptoms and sorting them intended audience – because he devoted more words into patterns that made causal sense. Cullen was also to it than any of the many other ethical challenges he a suspected atheist. At that time, professors at the addressed (McCullough 1998). University of Edinburgh were appointed by the Town I shall make no apology for going a little out of my Council and there was no tenure. There was a move- way in treating of so serious a subject. In an enquiry ment afoot to have Cullen dismissed from his faculty into the office and duties of a physician, I deemed it position, to prevent an atheist from infecting the stu- necessary to attempt to wipe off a reflection so de- dents with heresy (McCullough 1998). rogatory to our profession; and, at the same time, to Gregory gave a series of ethics lectures before stu- caution you against that petulance and vanity in con- dents transitioned from the lecture hall to the wards versation, which may occasion imputations of bad of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh for their clinical principles, equally dangerous to society, and to your training. As was then common, Gregory permitted own interest and honour (Gregory 1772, p. 70). his lectures to be published anonymously, to test re- In this paper, we will explain Gregory’s response ception of them by the medical and learned commu- to the contested boundary between medicine and re- nities. Probably edited by his son, James Gregory, the ligion and show how this remarkable text from the lectures appeared in 1770 as Observations on the Du- history of medical ethics can provide reliable guid- ties and Qualifications of a Physician, and on the Method ance to the Academy today. of Prosecuting Enquiries in Philosophy (Gregory 1770). This book was very well received, leading Gregory to revise and publish it under his own name as Lectures A METHODOLOGICAL NOTE on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician in 1772 Gregory’s style of reasoning was common in his day. (Gregory 1772). This book is remarkable for the scope It can best be described as argument by persuasion. of ethical challenges that Gregory addressed and that One sets out a number of considerations in support remain current, including confidentiality, the right of a position with the goal of persuading the reader of patients to express their views about treatment, to agree on the basis of the accumulated persuasive patients with “nervous ailments” now known as the power of all of the considerations considered togeth- “worried well,” and end-of-life care, including what er. This can also be called complementary reasoning: appears to be an endorsement of physician-assisted each successive consideration adds something not suicide (McCullough 1998). contained in its predecessor, creating a coherence Gregory addresses two contested boundaries. The among them. No one consideration, therefore, should first was between physician and surgeons. Using the be considered persuasive by itself (McCullough example of a gangrenous limb, Greogry makes the 1998). We now invite the reader to experience Grego- case for the physician taking the lead in making the ry’s method of argument by persuasion by presenting diagnosis and devising a treatment plan. If that plan in sequence each of the considerations that Gregory included surgery, the physician should turn the case advances with an update of each. over to the surgeon who then would take responsibil- ity for the surgery. No one had ever made such a pro- posal for the management of the contested boundary GREGORY’S ARGUMENT BY between medicine and surgery. The basis for Greg- PERSUASION ory’s proposal was the commitment of clinicians to the scientific practice of medicine directed to the pa- Scientifically Eminent Physicians of tient’s health-related interests, keeping all forms of Piety self-interest systematically secondary (Gregory 1770, 1772, McCullough 1998). Gregory first points out that there have been many The second contested boundary was that between scientifically eminent physicians who were noted for medicine and religion. Gregory almost certainly had their piety. Their examples are meant to refute Ubi in mind the political and personal peril that his col- tres medici, duo atheii, or the claim that becoming a league Cullen faced as well as the history of perse- scientific physician entails a commitment to atheism: cution of heretics. We know that this topic was of I shall conclude this subject with some observa- major importance to Gregory – and therefore for this tions on a charge of a heinous nature, which has been 58 Psychiatria Danubina 2021; Vol. 33, Suppl 3, pp S292-S298 SAR.indb 58 18/05/2021 10:41 Laurence B. McCullough, Frank A. Chervenak: THE PROFESSION OF MEDICINE IS SECULAR: AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IDEA WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN MEDICINE AND RELIGION. Science, Art & Religion 2021, Vol. 1, No 1-2, pp 57-63 often urged against our profession; I mean that of in- It is easy, however, to see whence this calumny fidelity, and contempt of religion. I think the charge has arisen. Men whose minds have been enlarged by ill-founded; and will venture to say, that the most knowledge, who have been accustomed to think, and eminent of our faculty have been distinguished for to reason upon all subjects with a generous freedom, real piety. I shall only mention, as examples, Harvey, are not apt to become bigots to any particular sect or Sydenham, Arbuthnot, Boerhaave, Stahl, and Hoff- system. They can be steady to their own principles man (Gregory, 1772, pp. 63-64). without thinking ill of those who differ from them; His students and contemporaries would have in- but they are impatient of the authority and controul stantly recognized men who were then regarded as sci- of men, who would lord it over their consciences, and entific giants. William Harvey (1578-1657) discovered dictate to them what they are to believe (Gregory circulation. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) authored 1772, p. 64). a textbook in medicine that remained in use for two Gregory’s point is subtle: It is correct for the sci- centuries, earning him the sobriquet, “The English entific physician to be “impatient with the authori- Hippocrates.” Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738) the ty and controul of men.” He may have had in mind founder of modern physiology and renowned teach- the rigid orthodoxy of the Church of Scotland and, er at the medical school at Leiden, where Gregory and as would be typical at the time, Roman Catholicism.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Palliative Care : the 400-Year Quest for a Good Death
    Palliative Care This page intentionally left blank Palliative Care The 400-Year Quest for a Good Death Harold Y. Vanderpool McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina ISBN 978-0-7864-9799-7 (softcover : acid free paper) ISBN 978-1-4766-1971-2 (ebook) ♾ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE British Library cataloguing data are available © 2015 Harold Y. Vanderpool. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: clockwise from top left hospice nurse with patient (Stockbyte/Thinkstock); Doctor Onstine, medical doctor, making an examination, 1943 (Library of Congress); Doctor and nurse examining patient in hospital room (Digital Vision/Thinkstock); The doctor’s office on Transylvania Project, Louisiana, 1940 (Library of Congress); Intensive Care Unit (iStock/Thinkstock) Printed in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com For Jan This page intentionally left blank Table of Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface 1 1: From Proclamation to Recognition: 1605–1772 5 2: Minute Details and Codified Conduct: 1789–1825 23 3: That Science Called Euthanasia: 1826–1854 39 4: Polarities Between Attention and Disregard: 1859–1894 58 5: Challenging the Overreach of Modern Medicine: 1895–1935 76 6: Never Say Die Versus Care for the Dying: 1935–1959 93 7: Times of Momentous Transition: 1960–1981 112 8: Progress, Threatening Seas, and Endurance: 1982–1999 140 9: Choices: 2000 to the Present 173 Epilogue 207 Chapter Notes 211 Bibliography 243 Index 265 vii This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments Research on the topics in this history began when I wrote the first of two master’s degree theses as a Kennedy fellow in medical ethics and the history of medicine at Har- vard University.
    [Show full text]
  • PASSAGES of MEDICAL HISTORY. Edinburgh Medicine, 1750-1800.*
    PASSAGES OF MEDICAL HISTORY. Edinburgh Medicine, 1750-1800.* By JOHN D. COMRIE, M.A., B.Sc., M.D., F.R.C.P.Ed. In my ten-minute talk last May about the Edinburgh medical school I dealt with the founding of the Royal College of Physicians, the botanic garden, and the expansion of the Town's College into the University of Edinburgh through the establishment of a medical faculty in 1726. In the second half of the eighteenth century the medical school at Edinburgh became much more than a local institution, and not only attracted students from all over the British Isles, but was the chief centre to which men desiring to study medicine had recourse from the newly-founded British colonies through- out the world. Several of the teachers were men who attained great reputations. Dr Robert Whytt succeeded John Rutherford as professor both of the theory and practice of medicine in 1747, and was appointed largely because he was interested in medical research, a rare pursuit in those days. Stone in the bladder was a serious and frequent complaint which attracted great public interest and produced many reputed solvents for these calculi. Whytt had carried out an elaborate series of experiments in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh with lime water, which he found to have a considerable power in disintegrating calculi, and he had published A n Essay on the Virtues of Lime Water and Soap in the Cure of the Stone. The treatment upon which he finally settled was to administer daily by the mouth water. He an ounce of soap and three pints or more of lime also published An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals which brought him into conflict with the great Albrecht von Haller and gained him prominent notice on the Continent.
    [Show full text]
  • Romantic Medicine and the Poetics of Palliation
    Romantic Medicine and the Poetics of Palliation by Brittany Pladek A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Brittany Pladek (2013) Romantic Medicine and the Poetics of Palliation Brittany Pladek Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2013 Abstract This study uses the interdisciplinary lens of Romantic medical ethics to reconsider received ideas about the therapeutic power of Romantic poetry. Studies of literature and medicine in the long nineteenth century have generally considered disease the era’s main medical symbol; they have likewise considered holistic “healing” its major model for poetry’s therapeutic effect, following Geoffrey Hartman’s description of Wordsworth’s ability to “heal the wound of self.” Without denying the importance of these paradigms, my work explores alternate foci: pain instead of disease, and palliation instead of healing. In Britain, professional medical ethics were first codified during the Romantic period in response to a variety of medical and social advances. But because of Romantic medicine’s curative uncertainty and utilitarian intolerance for pain, its ethicists turned from cure to palliation to describe a doctor’s primary duty toward his patients. My study argues that this palliative ethic was taken up by Romantic literary writers to describe their own work. By engaging with contemporary medical ethics treatises such as John Gregory’s 1770 Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician and Thomas Percival’s 1803 Medical Ethics, I explore four Romantic authors’ struggle to find an appropriate medical model for their work’s therapeutic benefits.
    [Show full text]
  • The Medical Collections: the Leaves of Life
    University of Aberdeen Special Libraries and Archives The Medical Collections: The Leaves of Life Hortus Sanitatis, Man mixing drugs, (Mainz: Meydenbach, 1491). Inc 3 An Information Document University of Aberdeen Development Trust King’s College Aberdeen Scotland, UK AB24 3FX t. +44 (0) 1224 272097 f. +44 (0) 1224 272271 www.abdn.ac.uk/devtrust/ King’s College Foundation Book, (1514). MSK 1, p.48 King’s College, Aberdeen (established 1495), Robert Gray, Mediciner from 1522 to the 1550s. was the first English-speaking university to teach In his hand we also have notes of medical prepa- medicine. Thus, the University has been involved rations, such as parsley and camomile being in medical teaching and collecting medical books, used for the treatment of gallstones. papers, and material objects for over five hun- dred years. It has also long been associated with Other 15th century holdings include a 1462 copy major medical advances and discoveries. of Bernard de Gordon’s Lilium Medicinae1, medi- cal notes by an Aberdonian student at Paris2, From its beginning, the University taught Medi- and a 1469 partial manuscript of the great Ara- cine as well as Theology, Law and Arts. The bian physician and philosopher Avicenna’s King’s College Foundation Book provides for a Canon3, as copied by a Scottish scribe. Among Doctor in Medicine to have a house and garden the early donations to the library of King’s Col- and a salary of £12 and six shillings per annum. lege is a magnificent folio of Avicenna, printed at Significantly, he was to be clothed like the medi- Venice — that is, at the confluence of east and cal doctors of the University of Paris, then the west — in 1544.
    [Show full text]
  • JOHN GREGORY's WRITINGS on MEDICAL ETHICS and PHILOSOPHY of MEDICINE Philosophy and Medicine VOLUME 57
    JOHN GREGORY'S WRITINGS ON MEDICAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF MEDICINE Philosophy and Medicine VOLUME 57 Editors H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Bay- lor College of Medicine and Philosophy Department, Rice University, Hous­ ton, Texas S. F. Spicker, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences, Boston, Mass. CLASSICS OF MEDICAL ETHICS 1 Series Editors Laurence B. McCullough, Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas Robert B. Baker, Department of Philosophy, Union College, Schenectady, New York and Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Bay­ lor College of Medicine and Philosophy Department, Rice University, Hous­ ton, Texas S. F. Spicker, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences, Boston, Massachusetts The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. JOHN GREGORY'S WRITINGS ON MEDICAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF MEDICINE LAURENCE B. MCCULLOUGH Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 0 KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON A CLP Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-7923-5000-6 Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers PO Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publishers, PO Box 358, Accord Station, Hingham, MA 02018-0358, USA In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers, PO Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
    [Show full text]
  • HYSTERIA at the EDINBURGH INFIRMARY: the CONSTRUCTION and TREATMENT of a DISEASE, 1770-1800 by GUENTER B
    Medical History, 1988, 32: 1-22. HYSTERIA AT THE EDINBURGH INFIRMARY: THE CONSTRUCTION AND TREATMENT OF A DISEASE, 1770-1800 by GUENTER B. RISSE* I In the introduction to his History of sexuality, Michel Foucault pointed to the eighteenth century as the period in which sexuality became a medical concern and women were, in his words, subjected to "hysterization".' By this term, Foucault probably meant that medicine began to pay greater attention to female bodily functions, trying to explain anew women's behaviour and physical complaints within the prevailing theoretical frameworks of the time. Thus, Foucault's seemingly novel "medicine of hysteria" replaced traditional and popular views based on humours, vapours, and the effects of a wandering womb. In his view, this was just one aspect of the medicalization imposed on eighteenth-century life with its inherent shifts in power relationships which constitutes one of the central motifs in his writings.2 The present investigation started out as an effort to organize a rich source ofprimary clinical material: lecture notes and patient case histories from the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh during the late-eighteenth century.3 The analysis focused on hospitalized patients labelled as suffering from "hysteria", trying to document and perhaps clarify Foucault's ideas on the subject. Using such historical evidence, this study made some rather unexpected discoveries. It not only exposed the ambiguities inherent in the construction of disease entities, but also refuted Foucault's account of the sexualization ofworking-class women, at least for late-eighteenth-century Edinburgh. Before presenting the archival data, however, it will be useful briefly to consider the views regarding women's health and especially hysteria prevalent in the medical literature during the latter part of the eighteenth century.
    [Show full text]
  • N John Gregory.PMD
    HISTORY JOHN GREGORY AND THE BACKGROUND TO MEDICAL PHILOSOPHY* B. Ashworth, Retired Consultant Neurologist, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh The recent technical revolution has stimulated a revival medical problems. About ten years later, when he moved of interest in medical philosophy. John Gregory seems to London, he entered the society of Samuel Johnson to be a neglected figure in medical history despite his and others and met Mrs Elizabeth Montagu of the Blue extensive writings in the mid eighteenth century until Stocking Circle, with whom he corresponded for the rest recently, most of his work was out of print.1 of his life. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and one year later he was called to the Chair of Medicine Plato emphasised virtue, and said that good medicine is in Aberdeen to fill a vacancy created by the death of his that which attains good ends. This is now known as half-brother. However, he was not able to establish clinical teleological ethics. From ancient times there was teaching in King’s College. A few years later he moved emphasis on codes, oaths and other formulations. The to Edinburgh, where he was soon appointed Professor of Hippocratic oath2 defined morally acceptable conduct Medicine with duties in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. towards patients, considered duties to patients and His professorial colleague was William Cullen, and they referred to priestly vows and sacred art. Gregory’s came to an arrangement of giving a course of lectures on thinking was more than an appendage to this. He pointed the theory and practice of medicine in alternate years.5,6 out that the feeling and opinion of the patient had been ignored, and in his writing went on to discuss most other EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MEDICINE aspects of ethics and clinical practice.
    [Show full text]
  • Eighteenth-Century Medical Scotland: a Select Bibliography
    Eighteenth-Century Medical Scotland: A Select Bibliography Manuscripts and dissertations A Narrative of Some Late Injurious Proceedings of the Managers of the Royal Infirmary Against the Students of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh (pamphlet) (Edinburgh, 1785), MSS Collection, Edinburgh University Library. Appeal for Funds Made in Behalf of Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council, for Funding of the Special Servants Ward at the Infirmary, Edinburgh, 31 January 1771 (pamphlet) National Library of Scotland. W. Cullen, Consultation Correspondence, XXI vols (Edinburgh, 1755–90), MSS Collection, Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. W. Cullen, Essay on the Preservation of Health, parts I-II, MSS, Thomson/Cullen Papers, Glasgow University Library. W. Cullen, An Essay on the Hypochondriac Disease in a Letter, MSS, Thomson/Cullen Papers, Glasgow University Library. W. Cullen, Clinical Lectures delivered for John Gregory, February–April 1772 (Edinburgh, 1772), MSS Collection, Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. W. Cullen, Clinical Lectures (Edinburgh, 1772–3), MSS Collection, Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. W. Cullen, Clinical Cases and Reports taken at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh from Dr Cullen by R.W. Hall (Edinburgh, 1773–4), MSS Collection, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. 351 Bibliography A. Duncan, Sr, Clinical Reports and Commentaries, February–April 1795, presented by A.B. Morison (Edinburgh, 1795), MSS Collection, Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. Edinburgh Infirmary, General Register of Patients, MSS Collection, Edinburgh University Library. Edinburgh Infirmary, Treasurer’s Account Book, MSS Collection, Edinburgh University Library. Edinburgh, Infirmary, Minute Books, MSS Collection, Edinburgh University Library. M.D.L. Finlay, An Enquiry into the ‘Ague’ in Scotland, MD thesis, Edinburgh University, 1978.
    [Show full text]
  • A Physiological Definition of Style: Science, Religion, and Women’S Writings in the Early American Republic
    A PHYSIOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF STYLE: SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND WOMEN’S WRITINGS IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC BY HEATHER BLAIN VORHIES DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Peter Mortensen, Chair Professor Robert Markley Associate Professor Ned O’Gorman Associate Professor Ted Underwood Abstract The world of the early American Republic was surprisingly inter-connected: ideas, people, and text traveled in the name of Christianity. This curious combination of rhetoric and science in the service of God during the early American Republic is the heart of my dissertation project. My dissertation brings together early American evangelical Protestantism, Enlightenment rhetoric, and Benjamin Rush’s physiological psychology in an analysis of transatlantic religious writing, speaking, and reading practices in the Atlantic world. Using Methodist women's spiritual journals, copybooks, and correspondence as my primary sources, I argue that the mental experience of persuasion is in fact a bodily one. I thereby question current assumptions about Enlightenment rhetoric, namely that it fostered no real changes or improvements to rhetorical theory. I contend that Enlightenment rhetoric did indeed effect deep changes in rhetorical theory. Based on evidence of the early American Republic’s understanding of Enlightenment rhetorical and scientific theory, we can see 1) rhetoric as epistêmê, or a system of knowledge, rather than technê, skills or craft, 2) a deeply body-dependent concept of the mind that comes to light in evangelical Protestantism’s practice of enthusiasm, and therefore, 3) a canon of style that was essential (and continues to be essential) to cognition.
    [Show full text]
  • An Examination of Medical Ethics, Benevolent Lies, and the Doctor-Patient Relationship in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain
    HEALING POWERS; AN EXAMINATION OF MEDICAL ETHICS, BENEVOLENT LIES, AND THE DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Rosa Dale-Moore University of Puget Sound Honors Thesis April 18, 2016 Dale-Moore 2 Healing Powers; An Examination of Medical Ethics, Benevolent Lies, and The Doctor-Patient Relationship in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain Medical ethics is an applied philosophy. It rests upon the back of medical practice, and relies on the doctor-patient relationship for practical use. Therefore, an understanding of that complex relationship between physician and patient is crucial to a deep interpretation of any codified medical ethics. The doctor-patient relationship during the eighteenth-century in Britain was influenced by many factors, including deep power and education imbalances between doctors and patients, as well as the use of that power by physicians over their patients. This paper will discuss foundational thought for the practice of medical ethics in the context of Dr. Thomas Percival, a physician in late eighteenth century Britain, and his work in which he introduced a code of medical ethics in an attempt to correct the imbalance of values used by physicians in their medical practices and to codify medical ethics as a practice in the Manchester Infirmary. Dr. Percival’s writing illuminates many aspects of common medical practice in Manchester during this time, including the procedure of benevolent lies, a technique which involved the choice of a physician to not inform patients of their conditions because doing so would harm them emotionally more than it would help them intellectually. The use of such deceptions between late eighteenth-century doctors and patients was indicative of the power structures between physician and patient in late eighteenth-century Britain, and stemmed from the educational background of many Scottish physicians, from inequalities of wealth and status between physicians and patients, and the related knowledge and power discrepancies inevitable in the doctor-patient relationship.
    [Show full text]
  • A Question to Society: “Whether the Art of Medicine As It Has Been Usually Practiced Has Contributed to the Advancement of Mankind” Kayla Wiles | Furman University
    A Question to Society: “Whether the Art of Medicine as it Has Been Usually Practiced Has Contributed to the Advancement of Mankind” Kayla Wiles | Furman University Prior to the medical and public health revolutions of the nineteenth century, Scotland’s rudimentary health- care system consisted of little more than corrupted physicians, overcrowded hospitals, and ineffective treatments for a small percentage of the population. In his written abstract to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, Dr. John Gregory attributes these problems to a flawed Scottish medical education. This abstract formed the basis of Gregory’s larger publications which introduced the concept of bioethics to Britain. My study analyzes how Gregory uses a rhetoric of sensibility to characterize the proponents and barriers to medical advancement. Analyzing Gregory’s abstract contributes to our understanding of how the Scottish Enlightenment provided venues for medical professionals to critique society and define rhetoric of the era. It is November 8, 1763. John Gregory rises this question to the Society on July 12, 1762, from his seat at the Red Lion1 and gazes but would not present his written response casually at a handful of colleagues, all of until almost a year and a half later (Ulman whom have put their drinks aside so as to 119, 193). give their undivided attention to the Whether anyone spoke after Gregory on speaker. Gregory then voices a question to November 8 is unclear in the Society’s min- be considered just for that meeting of utes, which only note that Gregory inserted Aberdeen’s Philosophical Society: “Whether his abstract in the “Question Book” on the art of medicine as it has been usually December 13, 1763 (Ulman, Table A-7).
    [Show full text]
  • A Bibliography of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy
    SCOTTISH COMMON SENSE PHILOSOPHY Sources and Origins Volume 5 Edited and Introduced by James Fieser University of Tennessee at Martin THOEMMES Scottish Common Sense Philosophy: Sources and Origins A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SCOTTISH Edited and Introduced by James Fieser University of Tennessee at Martin, USA COMMON SENSE PHILOSOPHY Volume 1 James Oswald, An Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion (1766–1772) Volume 2 James Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) Volumes 3 and 4 Early Responses to Reid, Oswald, Beattie and Stewart Volume 5 A Bibliography of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy Edited with a Preface by James Fieser University of Tennessee at Martin THOEMMES PRESS First published by Thoemmes Press, 2000 Thoemmes Press 11 Great George Street Bristol BS1 5RR, England Thoemmes Press US Office CONTENTS 22883 Quicksilver Drive Sterling, Virginia 20166, USA Editor’s Preface vii http://www.thoemmes.com 1. John Abercrombie (1780–1844) 1 2. James Beattie (1735–1803) 10 Scottish Common Sense Philosophy: Sources and Origins 5 Volumes : ISBN 1 85506 825 7 3. Thomas Brown (1778–1820) 34 4. George Campbell (1719–1796) 41 © James Fieser, 2000 5. James Dunbar (1742–1798) 56 6. David Fordyce (1711–1751) 58 7. Alexander Gerard (1728–1795) 62 8. William Hamilton (1788–1856) 66 9. Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782) 78 10. James Oswald (1703–1793) 97 11. Thomas Reid (1710–1796) 102 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data 12. Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) 123 A CIP record of this title is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
    [Show full text]